Semantic Nonsense: From Popyeyes to Sonics

Popeyes new chicken sandwich

Well, new-ish. Like most of the United States, I did not get to sample this one the first time around. At my local Popeyes, it had sold out before 1 p.m. the very first day.

Not one for fighting with crowds, I gave the Nov. 3 rerelease a wide berth, devouring my first sandwich this very night. Which is why the photo is blatantly gamma-adjusted.

So onto the food itself. The chicken is exactly what you come to expect from Popeyes. The breading features its usual best-in-class crispness, with a very satisfying crunch to it.

While I do like the way a pickle slice can add a tangy, briney effect to the buns when placed against them, these pickles are set between the chicken and the layer of spicy sauce. Since I personally don’t enjoy a pickle for its own sake, I just ditched them outright. You mileage will vary, of course.

The bun itself was nothing special, but it does make sure to do its job properly. It’s study without being heavy. Toasty without being charred. It could have been improved with a little bit more butter on the business end, but was fine as-is.

I got the spicy version of the sandwich first to have that extra bit to review, and it might have been a mistake. I do like spicy; the Popeyes ghost pepper wings (while nowhere near as spicy as an actual ghost pepper) were a favorite of mine. But the flavor of this particular spicy was… spicy. So this bit was my one disappointment that’ll probably have me going for the regular version in the future.

Overall, it’s a damn sandwich and not worth killing over, for Christ’s sake. But I get the regular-level hype for it. I would be perfectly happy eating these instead of those by a certain highly skilled competitor.

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Sonic the recogniseable

I wonder just how many social circles out there in our target demographic couldn decide which of these two nuggets was the bigger news.

Earlier today, the brand-spanking new trailer for the newly repolished Sonic the Hedgehog movie landed. And while it still looks like an adult-unsafe low-effort kids movie, at least it’s no longer doing Sonic dirty with that mascot costume-like original design.

There’s a lot to like here. The licensed music fits the mood, the new model is close enough to Sonic’s classic design that even though it still diverges, it’s clearly the same character we already know.

His new appearance makes it much easier to emote than, say, I don’t know, a realistic lion. The animators really got to show off their skills with the new, fluid facial animations, to boot. It’s astounding how much of a difference having a moving brow can make.

Another advantage of Sonic’s more cartoonish proportions is that it makes selling his speed simpler. It’s much easier to mentally expect him to be a living jump cut when he doesn’t look like a person.

While Paramount nuked several of their original trailer postings, it’s still easy enough to find if you want to compare and contrast. You’ll have to use a little bit of imagination, though, as the two trailers have perhaps 4 seconds of footage in common.

Be warned, changing Sonic’s appearance doesn’t solve the following issues:

• The people who thought adult-male-in-a-onesie-scaled-down-to-one-third-height was a great idea for Sonic’s design also made every other decision about the movie.
• The fastest thing alive apparently spends most of the movie riding in a truck to escape the bad guy.
• This about the 797,291st time a film adaptation’s plot is fake character goes to the real world. Super Mario Bros is now (sadly) retroactively brilliant for flipping that script.
• On a related note, the trailer teases Mobius long enough for us to realise that setting would have been far more interesting.
• Jaleel White is not doing the voice. (Fight me.)
• The CGI studio probably was working on a fixed bid (as is custom) and not not have seen an extra cent for their extra half-a-year of work.

Having said all that, the proof of the pudding is always in the tasting. Perhaps we’ll revisit this after Valentine’s Day… if I don’t go see Fantasy Island instead.

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Kit Kat flavor of the week:

Oh… Uh… I wasn’t expecting to be back to Semantic Nonsense this soon. Kinda shot myself in the foot with that one.